Nikos Kazantzakis: Black news! Dread war broke out.

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Nikos Kazantzakis: Selections on war

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Nikos Kazantzakis
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Translated by Kimon Friar

Thus War, the horseman, turned back to his crimson courts
and dragged brave gallants by their belts, girls by their braids,
and hung small children from his saddle horns in clusters.
Behind him the blind followed, stumbling with long staffs,
and some way back the cripples, the armless, the half wits,
and mothers in long rows who walked alive toward Hades.
Full-glutted crows strolled by the riverbank, digesting,
crocodiles sweetly shut their Iidded eyes, and yawned.
for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains
new flesh would spout once more and then be munched anew.

***

Eggs hatched in every nest till the trees filled with beaks,
hares frisked in the wood clearings, fawns on meadow grass,
and his wife danced within her husband’s nuptial arms
till their son came in nine months’ time, and the world glowed.
But with his son there came one night in his black ship
that pirateer, grim War, and snatched him to far lands.

***

Black news!
Dread war broke out, doors clanged, and married couples clasped
each other tight as though they’d never part, far off
bronze weapons glittered on the mountains, fields turned red,
Death sat enthroned on his black steed and from his head
thick blood dripped down and plucked-out hair and gouged-out eyes.
Night fell and the full pallid moon rose in the sky,
the wounded groaned amid the fragrance of cut hay,
black buzzards heard them, swooped and ate, and the groans ceased.